How to Respond to Evil
An Excerpt from Sweeter Than Revenge by David Richo
We open our discussion with a powerful statement from Father Pedro Arrupe, SJ, former head of the Jesuit order, in his 1973 Address to Graduates of Jesuit Schools in Europe:
Most of us would be relatively good in a good world. What is difficult is to be good in an evil world, where the egoism of others and the egoism built into the institutions of society attack us and threaten to annihilate us.
Under such conditions, the only possible reaction would seem to be to oppose evil with evil, egoism with egoism, hate with hate; in short, to annihilate the aggressor with his own weapons. But is it not precisely thus that evil conquers us most thoroughly? For then, not only does it damage us exteriorly, it perverts our very heart. . . . Evil is overcome only by good, hate by love, egoism by generosity. It is thus that we must sow justice in our world. To be just, it is not enough to refrain from injustice. One must go further and refuse to play its game, substituting love for self-interest as the driving force of society.
Evil is a mystery. But we can say something about the elements of an evil act:
- We intend and do grave harm.
- Our action involves a serious matter.
- We act with malice.
- We are fully aware that what we are doing is wrong.
- We are acting with the full consent of our will—that is, voluntarily.
All evil is harmful, but not all that is harmful is evil.
An example of an evil act is murder in the first degree: someone wills an evil effect—that is, the criminal death of the victim, with no mitigating circumstances and with full understanding that murder is wrong. (Psychopaths have an organic deficit of empathy, a lack of conscience, so the question of choice becomes moot.)
Not even a good end justifies an evil means, but when evil happens anyway, good can sometimes come of it, though this does not justify evil choices.
Sometimes we choose the cause that leads to a harmful end while not deliberately willing that effect. An alcoholic husband knows he will most likely strike his wife and children if he drinks too much. He then is actually choosing to be abusive when he engages in excessive drinking.
Sometimes evil is willed in both the cause and effect. For instance, the advertising committee members of a tobacco company vote to aim advertisements at teenage children while knowing that vaping and smoking will definitely harm their health, be likely to lead to addiction, and possibly end in death. Unlike premeditated murder, the tobacco company willfully reaches out to teens, but not intentionally to cause the possible lethal effect—that is, cancer. Yet tobacco companies know of the deleterious effects of their products, so they have willed evil in cause and effect. In this instance, intentional greed—a malicious intent—is the motivation.
Evil is a quality of a human act.
Some acts can be harmful, but we are not responsible for any resulting evil. For instance, we know that driving a car causes harm to the environment, but we are not maliciously intending that result or seeking personal gain. So evil in this instance cannot be imputed to the driver, but the driver is doing harm. Likewise, killing in self-defense or to protect others from being killed is doing harm, but it is not an evil in itself. All evil is harmful, but not all that is harmful is evil.
Evil is a quality of a human act. People perpetrate evil acts. Acts are evil, but people are not. At the same time, some people give themselves over to evil deeds so often and so fully that they become possessed by evil and so are considered evil by society— for example, Hitler or Stalin. Such people don’t consider their evil deeds to be wrong, only necessary. They normalize evil in their own minds but are still culpable. In the plays of Shakespeare, for instance, Macbeth and Iago normalized the evil that possessed them, but Laertes and Othello only did evil things.
Evil is not only a quality of an individual act but can also be systemic. It exists in corporate, political, and religious institutions that perpetuate injustice, abuse, greed, and war. Systemic evil exists in most of society’s institutions. In recent years, we have seen the corrupt underbelly of one venerated institution after another. All institutions, like all people, have a shadow side: a life-, justice-, and freedom-negating agenda. Whistle-blowers are the assisting forces in the human community who turn the spotlight on them and on ourselves.
Nonviolence is not a goal but a virtue, a habit, an ethical choice in the face of evil and aggression.
In Buddhism we are warned of three poisons that prevent enlightenment: greed, hate, and ignorance. All three can pave the way to retaliatory behavior. In greed, we want more and more and may be vengeful toward those we envy for having it. We retaliate more and more against those we hate. We retaliate out of ignorance of our interconnectedness as humans, thinking we have a separate existence or that our life is worth more than the lives of others. Notice the varied uses of the word “more” in the above description of the three poisons. Pursuing each “more” leads to winding up with less. Indeed, pursuing recrimination is precisely about a life of less: less generosity, less love, less connection.
There are many ways to respond to evil. Three stand out: passivity, violent resistance, or nonviolent resistance. What is called the reptilian brain—that is, our brain center of primitive, aggressive, uncivilized impulses—supports the first two options. The third way is militant nonviolence. This is not passivity or obsequious submission, but resolute opposition to evil using peaceful means—what Martin Luther King Jr. often called “soul force” and what Gandhi called “truth force.”
Nonviolence is not a goal but a virtue, a habit, an ethical choice in the face of evil and aggression. Its only purpose is the peace and survival of all concerned. It is not a strategy to win but to win over others to the disarming arts of fruitful relating. We act this way in our relationships whether others show loving-kindness to us or even thank us for it. Faithfulness to our own standard of love is so satisfying that recognition by or thanks from others is no longer a priority. Now even our political purposes have become enlightened. The old lyrics “We shall overcome someday” mean that we shall overcome injustice, war, and hate, not that we will show the officials who support them how wrong they are. This is what a new way of living looks like.
Evil easily wins approval when it is motivated by what we judge to be a positive purpose or when it offers the possibility of a beneficial outcome. In such instances, we may believe that a good intention can justify an evil result. Of course, good intentions do not justify evil. As it is said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But the irony is that sometimes evil leads to an unexpected good, as in the story of Joseph and his brothers. Friedrich Nietzsche in Human, All Too Human states: “Such evil and painful incidents belong to the history of the great emancipation.”
Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Share
David Richo, PhD, is a psychotherapist, teacher, writer, and workshop leader whose work emphasizes the benefits of mindfulness and loving-kindness in personal growth and emotional well-being. He combines Jungian, poetic, and mythic perspectives in his work with the intention of integrating the psychological and the spiritual.
David Richo is the author of numerous books, including How to Be an Adult in Relationships and The Five Things We Cannot Change. He lives in Santa Barbara and San Francisco, California.
